• Simon Waxman reviews Karen Houppert’s new book on America’s broken public defense system: you may have a right to a lawyer, but no one said you’d get a competent one.
• “Lean In is really waging a battle for work and against unmonetized life.” Kate Losse in Dissent.
• Henry Farrell reviews Mark Blyth’s book on austerity, asks the question everyone’s thinking: “why did politicians ever think that austerity was a good idea in the first place?”
• Crooked Timber runs a seminar on Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning Real Utopias, thus far garnering responses from Bill Barnes, John Quiggin, Diane Coyle, David Estlund, and more.
• Hazem Kandil considers the state of the Egyptian revolution in London Review of Books.
• Theresa Runstedler, the author of a new book on heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, is suspicious of the motive behind an attempt to pardon the African American boxer.
• “It’s not racism. They just shouldn’t be here.” Dave Zirin details the arresting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry in Israeli soccer.
• Hurdle the Harper’s paywall and you can read Terry Eagleton’s review of a new Marx biography.
• Noted labor historian Melvyn Dubofsky asks, “Can the labor movement reverse its decline?” and answers in the negative. Ready yourself for a depressing read.
• RIP Chinua Achebe, Nigerian novelist and seminal figure of post-colonial literature.
• From the MIA: E. P. Thompson’s “Socialist Humanism”
• Herbert Marcuse in conversation on a horrible couch.